Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 47 - Shopping
Have you tried to launch a Google Shopping campaign recently? If not, you may not know that Google will try really, really hard to convince you to run Performance Max instead.
In fact, if you're not careful, you will end up launching a PMax campaign without even realizing it.
Don't be tricked. Shopping campaigns are still a staple for ecommerce business owners. But of course, they bring their own unique challenges, like which bid strategy to use, how many products to advertise, and how to optimize them when you can't directly control your targeting or your ad creative.
Let's get into it.
I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 47: Shopping.
Our first question comes from patrickjanedri1671 on YouTube, and they say, I love your content. Thank you. Can you please talk to us about Manual bidding versus Automated with Standard Shopping campaigns? When do you switch to automated? If you do, how often do you tweak manual bids and what data do you look at? I'd love to hear from you on this.
Here is your answer, Patrick. Standard Shopping campaigns only offer three bid strategies: Manual CPC, Maximize Clicks and Target ROAS. It's like crawl, crawl, run. Manual, Automated, Smart.
The goal for any campaign type, in my opinion, is to get ramped up enough to use Smart Bidding. That is how you're going to drive the most sustainable, scalable results. So in a Standard Shopping campaign, your only Smart Bidding strategy is Target ROAS. But I would not start a brand new campaign on Target ROAS. We don't drop babies on the floor and expect them to run. They need to crawl first. For crawling, you can do Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks.
I personally like to start with the Automated bid strategy, Maximize Clicks, with no bid limits, really knowing that CPCs will be expensive initially, as they should, but they will come back down as my campaign starts to ramp up and learn. If you start with a bid limit in place, you're going to artificially limit how many clicks you can get, the kinds of searches you can advertise on, and you can end up killing your campaign before it even gets off the ground.
With Maximize Clicks, I want to get to about 30 conversions within 30 days before switching over to Target ROAS. And if I don't have enough conversion volume to do that, I'll use micro-conversions to achieve that. For example, using “add to cart” as a conversion action or using “begin checkout” as a conversion action in addition to “purchase" just to help that campaign scale up and learn. More about that in Episode 39 about micro-conversions.
I don't tweak Manual bids because I don't run Shopping campaigns on Manual Bidding, so I can't advise on that, but what I can say is that you're going to want to review your search terms and your product level reporting to see what's working.
If you find that you have to add negatives for at least 20% of your search terms, that suggests that you actually need to do some feed optimization to get yourself serving on more relevant terms rather than trying to play aggressive whack-a-mole after the fact.
When you look at product reporting to see how individual products are doing, you'll likely find some winners and a lot of losers. In special Episode 40 of this podcast called “How to Optimize a Google Shopping Campaign,” I dive into great detail about what to do with that product reporting and how to optimize based on it.
But all in all, your core question was Manual versus Automated and when to switch. I recommend switching to Target ROAS when you have at least 30 conversions in 30 days.
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Our next question comes from Shuvo Biswas on LinkedIn, and they say, how do you optimize exclusions for Shopping campaigns?
This is actually an interesting question because you can exclude products, and you can exclude searches via negative keywords, but you can't exclude audiences or demographics in a Shopping campaign. Really.
Now, I touched on this a bit in response to Patrick's question at the start of this episode, what data I look at. I'll review the Search Terms Report daily when I first start a new Shopping campaign, and then weekly after that. Once we're in weekly mode, if you find you have to add negatives for at least 20% of your search terms, then that suggests you actually need to optimize your feed to get yourself serving on more relevant terms.
So what does that mean?
Feed optimization in Google Merchant Center, not Google Ads, really is your number one optimization lever for a Shopping campaign. Since the campaign is automated, your targeting is completely determined by the contents of your feed. The automated feed that a platform like Shopify gives you can absolutely get you started and you can get great results with that, but to take your Shopping campaign to the next level, it's time to work on your feed.
And I actually have a lesson about how to get started with optimizing your feed in Merchant Center as part of my Google Ads course. It was our Monthly Meet from September 2022, but it is still 100% valid today. Five steps to get started with Shopping optimization.
Then, of course, product exclusions. This is the easier and more often overlooked aspect of Shopping. You do not need to advertise every single one of your products. Maybe start by advertising a handful of bestsellers and then work out from there depending on budget and performance.
To dive deeper into how to set up and optimize Shopping campaigns, you're going to want to check out my Inside Google Ads course. We just had Mike Rhodes as a guest expert to talk about Google Ads scripts. He literally wrote the book about Google Ads. We had Duane Brown come in to share insights he's gained from hundreds of account audits this year. And soon we'll have Amy Hebdon sharing how you can create magnetic Responsive Search ads, and Anthony Higman, the world's foremost expert in Local Services ads, to spill his secrets about LSAs exclusively for my course members.
As an Inside Google Ads member, you get access to me to answer your burning questions and dozens of the top Google Ads experts in the world. You can join now at learn.jyll.ca. That's learn dot J-Y-L-L dot C-A or follow the link in the episode description.
Our final question today comes from Uzair Imran on LinkedIn. And they say, nice way to segment the bestselling and the second to bestselling products. Would you think about feeding the Kitties more so they turn into Heroes? Also, would you think about getting some Dogs away from your product home if they aren't worth it?
If you are confused, let me explain. This is in response to the story that I actually shared in Episode 40 of this podcast about how my client and I categorized her products as Heroes, Kitties and Doggies to optimize her Shopping campaign by focusing only on Heroes, top products, and Kitties, products with potential to become top products, while excluding the Doggies, the poor performing products.
So first, when we think about feeding Kitties so they turn into Heroes, absolutely. Categorizing products is just one piece. You then have to decide what strategy to use with those categories.
One strategy is to keep the Kitties, the second tier products, running with a smaller budget and a higher ROAS target, just to try to squeeze what profitability you can out of them.
Another strategy is to flip that on its head. Feed them more budget and a lower ROAS target to give them a chance to grow and maybe become Heroes. No right or wrong strategy. It's about your goals and really your budget.
Second, would you think about getting some dogs away from your product home if they aren't worth it? Sure, but remember, just because something is a Doggie in your Shopping campaign, it doesn't mean it's a Dog product.
For example, I have another client who has like four or five different categories of products she sells. And one category has a much higher price point than the rest. From a Shopping campaign perspective on Google, this category just does not perform well. It's not clear from that little Shopping ad with a tiny picture why this thing costs so much more than results from Amazon or Temu, or whatever. From an email marketing perspective, when she's reaching out to her existing customers who understand the value of her products, or from an organic social media perspective, this product category does well and sells well. It's a Hero product. It's just a Doggie in Google Ads.
Keep that in mind. Just because something is a winner or a loser from ads - and ads in this circumstance, we're talking cold traffic, people who have intent but are not familiar with your business and your unique selling points - doesn't mean it's a winner or loser product for your business overall.
In the Google Ads interface, Shopping campaigns may be shunted inside in favor of shiny Performance Max campaigns, but they are still a powerhouse campaign type for ecommerce businesses. For example, did you know that your Shopping ads are eligible to show in AI Overviews? As of right now, Search is not, just Shopping.
While I'm a proponent of leveraging AI-powered bidding and moving towards more automation in your Google Ads account, I'm still seeing Standard Shopping campaigns outperform PMax campaigns for smaller ecommerce advertisers. The best way to know is to test it out yourself to see what works best for your business.
Today's Insider Challenge is this. Let's say you are a one product business. You sell one really great thing. For example, a shoe cleaning gel or a special kind of toothpaste. (These are both real examples from previous clients, by the way.) In your product feed, you have a handful of products because you sell a bundle of two, a bundle of four, a bundle of eight, etc. Do you advertise all of these variants or just one variant? How do you decide?
The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.
Last episode's challenge was this. A potential client reaches out to you who has never run Google Ads before. They want to run Google Ads for their business. It's a relatively new business, a year old or so, and they sell bespoke children's clothing. What are some questions you would ask this business owner to determine whether or not they should run Google Ads?
Here are some of the first questions I would ask them. First is, have you made any sales yet? Just because they've been in business for a year, it doesn't mean they've been making sales.
And then I want to know as a follow-up, have your sales come from people you know, referrals from people you know, or arm's-length strangers? The reason for that is because if they have not made sales yet from arms-length strangers who have no personal connection to them, they're likely not going to do well with ads, which is all cold traffic.
Next, how are you marketing right now? And that'll tell me if they've dabbled in other kinds of ads or if they're doing email marketing, organic, social, SEO, just what else is going on and how they've gotten those sales. That'll also help me follow up with who is your target customer? Why do they buy from you? I can start to understand their target audience, their unique selling propositions to see if that's something I think would translate well to Google Ads.
Then third is my Rule of Two. I want to know what your website conversion rate is, and what your average order value is. I multiply those numbers together and if it's not at least $2, they're probably not ready to run ads.
And it's also important for me to know the answers to the previous questions because if everyone coming to their website is like friends and family, that's going to be a really high conversion rate that's not indicative of how ads might perform. Whereas if they've been really investing in SEO, for example, and so they are getting a lot of organic search traffic that's not just branded searches, that is a good signal for how their website might convert from Google Ads.
And then last but definitely not least, I would ask if they're prepared to spend at least $1,000 a month for at least two months and potentially see no results. If that would decimate their business, they're not ready to run ads. Whereas if they're like, yep, let's do it, it's a test, great, then great. They probably are ready to run ads.
Did I miss anything? What else would you want to know?
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.